


Second Chance - a Ghost Story

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Descriptions of Rot, Explicit Language, Friendship, Ghosts, Healing, Humanstuck, M/M, Possession as a Metaphor, Possible Romance with an Angry Spirit, hints of something from Pesterquest appear in chapter 3!!!, maybe I should tag, questionable relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Xefros invites a dead guy home with him.  But Dammek is burning inside, hungry and longing.  He doesn’t realize how much of Xefros’s life he can take.
Relationships: Aradia Megido & Xefros Tritoh, Aradia is shipped with Sollux here, Dammek & Xefros Tritoh, Dammek/Xefros Tritoh, Trizza Tethis & Xefros Tritoh, and Gamzee is shipped with Karkat, but it's only mentioned very briefly in the final chapter!
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	1. Xefros and the Dead Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I hope you enjoy this fic, if you read it~ I actually drafted a version of this a while ago, but decided it could be fun to edit it up/throw it into the world. So... hmmm.   
>  Editing! I'm sorry for anything and everything I might've gotten weird. We still don't really know much about Dammek, so a lot of this is speculation... Humanstuck AU speculation. 
> 
> Thanks!!! I hope you're staying safe and having a great day.

It would have always been difficult in that town for Xefros Tritoh, even if he couldn’t see the dead things dragging themselves along the sides of the highway and peeking in his windows at night. Smearing the glass with their dripping ruined fingers – licking bone-dry tongues against lips as tattered as old tissue paper. Yes, the unhappy dead were a complicated thing, but _they_ would have followed Xefros anywhere. There were always, always unburied things, always things that died with enough flurry inside to keep them hanging on. 

It might have been fair to say that the trouble with that town was Trizza Tethis, the mayor’s own daughter, who was going to Xefros’s school. It was true she mocked the way he stuttered out apologies and tripped over his own feet trying to get out of her way. It was true she went around weighed down by gaudy jewels her family had slaughtered other families for, and it was true she told the worst jokes and then waited with a plastic smile and eyes as huge and glinting as blood diamonds for everybody around to laugh. Laugh or _else_ , you know. Or else she’d leave you with your eyes swollen shut and maybe a couple of your bones splintered, maybe a ton of detention. 

Really, Trizza on her own would have been bad enough, but of course it was never just _one_ giggling heiress who got people beaten up behind the gym on weekends – one heiress who allowed herself to brand strangers because of where they lived, or how they spoke, or whether they complimented her enough when she came up with a new comedy routine. It was the whole school, swept up in Trizza’s will like tiny fish carried by the wake of a ship. It was the town, because Trizza’s mom was a whole lot like her only with better makeup and a tattoo of a royal golden trident stretching down her arm, glittering merciless gold. 

It was the town that had Xefros hiding under a neighbor’s porch that day, too, waiting for a few of Trizza’s hench-classmates to pass. Waiting where the dead things were, with his face squished into the kind of thick, greasy earth he knew worms liked best, with his sports jersey getting some generous new slime stains. Something that had once been a squirrel nibbled on his hair, so close Xefros couldn’t breathe without gulping down the smell of its crusty little bones. Poor thing. He would have shooed it away gently, if he’d dared to move at all. 

Maybe it was because he’d slithered under the rickety, chipped-paint boards of that porch, or maybe it would have happened anyway. Whatever the case, though, that was where Xefros met _him_. 

_He_ reached out and brushed the squirrel away, first off, and he hissed something that sounded a little too much like the creaking of the floorboards up above them. A little too much like a shudder of wind. But there was a voice buried deep down under all that, a human voice, impatient and teasing. 

“Why’re you even hiding?” the dead boy asked. “Your body’s stronger than mine was, and I used to fight.” 

The guy had died recently enough, so he still looked almost whole — he looked roughly Xefros's age, and his skin had only been nibbled a little bit by the squirming things under the earth. He smelled like cigarette smoke and his own long-dried blood; there were dark shades over his eyes, so Xefros couldn’t tell what sort of dead he was. Maybe he was the kind of wandering thing with sinking, black-ice eyes, or maybe he was the kind that burned and might soon change into something _else_. He probably knew better than to clue a stranger into private business like that. Either way, it looked like he had styled his hair when he was alive. 

“Everyone who fights them loses,” Xefros said, thinking about the far-away mayor and her family. Thinking about Trizza ordering teachers around, and kicking over desks with her sharp, crystalline heels when she got mad.

“So far,” the boy answered. It sounded like a challenge. He had crooked teeth, and Xefros could see himself reflected faintly in his sunglasses. As if _he_ were the dead and distant thing, only barely there. “Yeah, and I lost too… so far.” 

“I’m sorry,” Xefros whispered. 

When the dead guy snorted a laugh, he sounded almost breathing. “You look so damn scared,” he said. “Are you always like this?” 

“Uh. Probably,” Xefros said. “Sorry, again?” He wasn’t sure what else to offer, in that moment. He ran from the dead by the train tracks, normally, when he cut through after school. He held his breath on his way past the cemetery, because of the stories his father told him about poor Aradia Megido and the spirits that slipped down her throat and curled up in her skull. But never, never had he thought, _“This dead guy might have been okay looking, before, maybe. If you cleaned some of the dirt off.”_ Never had he thought he would be told a ghost’s name. 

Most of the dead hadn’t been able to hold on to their names, anymore, Xefros didn’t think. Not by the time they circled people’s houses, hungry for what they might’ve had once; not by the time they were so desperately wanting that they reached for him the way the drowning stretched their arms up for the sky. 

The dead boy under the porch had a name, though. He was Dammek. No one had apologized to him for years and years. If other dead things saw him, they wanted what was left of his life, he said; if living things saw him they pretended not to. Xefros crawled out from under the porch when the time came and said thank you to him, and Dammek shrugged like he wasn’t sure how to respond. His eyes flashed down and away, behind his shades, a blur of burning that Xefros tried to tell himself he hadn’t really seen. Not completely. The burning, hungry dead still wanted so much. Want like that could be a horrifying thing. 

Xefros started seeing Dammek out on the street, after that, tipping over mailboxes or scribbling song lyrics up his arms with a stolen marker. Then he started stopping when Dammek called to him – crouching against an alley wall as the dead boy paced and fumed, venting all his pent up _being_ out on the shuffling, gentle stranger willing to listen and say what he guessed were the right things. Dammek said he had been private, during life – the sort to put extra locks on his door, and password protect all the documents on his computer. He’d written songs; he’d kept secrets. But now that he was dead, now that _they_ had killed him, he felt more alone than he ever had. 

Now, he needed someone like Xefros. Needed a friend, right? And Xefros didn’t have friends. Xefros had teammates when he played sports, but he knew he wouldn’t get to play high school ball forever. He was graduating soon, anyway, and then what? His world had always been the sort of small, flightless thing he could cup in his hands. He knew he would stay in that town, rattling around with the hungry dead and squished under Trizza’s glitter-polish thumb until he was dead, too. It was basically what his dad was doing, and his grandparents, and probably their grandparents... you know. Way, way back, as long as that town had been. 

All that knowing was probably why Xefros invited Dammek home far sooner than he thought he would. He held the door while Dammek tracked grave dirt in, talking, always talking about what he would have been and seen and done, if he could’ve. They watched action movies slumped against Xefros’s couch, sometimes, and downloaded music Dammek used to listen to. They decided whether Xefros was any good at singing pretty early on, because Dammek had always wanted to be part of a gritty, truth-telling band. 

Dammek said maybe they had been fated to meet one another; Dammek said he liked it when Xefros smiled. Other dead things scratched up the shingles on Xefros’s roof and tried to ooze in through wavery cracks in the floorboards, but Dammek acted as though he didn’t notice them… so after a while Xefros did, too. 

They went on, then, in that smothering town. Maybe Xefros tried to let himself believe they could go on like that for a long time. 


	2. Overwritten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again!!! I hope you enjoy this chapter, if you read it, and that life has been treating you kindly. Thank you! I'm sorry, again, for anything I might've gotten weird.

Dammek had died somewhere cold. He felt that, even if he didn’t remember it, exactly – he felt it had been raining and the wet was claustrophobic and dark all around him. Like he was already crammed in a coffin and waiting for the worms. He felt the person who killed him had tossed over a cruelly tender smile; he felt he’d bled out in the dirt just outside town, watering an earth that never really grew anything anyway. He told the soft, patient guy he’d found – Xefros Tritoh – that he’d died because he knew too much. Maybe that was even true. 

Maybe Dammek had posted something online about the mayor or her gold-and-bubblegum heiress. Maybe he’d tried organizing a strike-back force like Rufioh Nitram who’d died messily before him, or maybe he’d gambled on bringing in justice from that Beforus town the next county over. Whatever had happened, of course it was hush-hush. Of course Xefros hadn’t been able to find any death records online, or in that Ms. Aranea Serket’s library with all her smirks and cat-eye glasses, all her sultry lipstick and pearls. But Dammek didn’t want Xefros to know he couldn’t quite remember it. He figured he’d put the thing together on his own, and then they could go off and avenge him. Right? 

Death had been pain and cold and blood tasting wild and hot in Dammek’s mouth, blood splattered on his sunglasses. It had been waking up not remembering his last name and finding his dad couldn’t see him no matter how many times he trashed the kitchen. 

Dammek had followed Xefros under the porch because he knew the look on his face all too well – Xefros was swallowing all his rage down. Gulping it like a medicine he thought would make him better. Make him worthy of more. That anger shook in his hands, and twisted his expressions into something raw and bruised as an accidentally smashed drum set. Xefros didn’t even know it, probably. He didn’t even know how bad he needed a revolution. 

Dammek hadn’t honestly expected the living boy to see him, but once he did… well. At first he’d just liked being heard. Liked the baffled respect on Xefros’s face when he talked to him – _here’s one of the dead that can still trade words around, that can still hold most of his meat together._ Xefros had seen some stuff over the years, since he’d first woken up with a spindly dead thing dripping cobwebs like Addams Family lace and reaching down into his crib hoping to steal his spot in the world. He told Dammek about that long-ago time laughing nervously, rubbing at the smudges under his eyes. Dammek wasn’t sure how he would’ve turned out, if _he’d_ grown up with ghosts all around him. He hadn’t known how to say that in a way that wouldn’t make him sound lame, of course. 

And then, after a while – after Dammek had taken over what he thought was a fair amount of Xefros’s bedroom, and after he’d been the only person cheering Xefros’s name at one of his dumb sports championships, one voice and not really a voice at all… Dammek started to think about how he might have kissed Xefros if he’d been alive. How he might have dragged him around by the hand; how he might have borrowed too-big hoodies without asking, and maybe someday warmed his feet up against Xefros’s legs in the middle of the night. He felt sure, so sure, that Xefros wouldn’t have pushed him away then. Even if his feet were freezing. 

Xefros was just that kind of sweet, offering to do stuff like stop eating whatever foods Dammek missed the most around him. He was the kind of steady that made Dammek feel like he could keep his mind from racing away without him, too, and he didn’t say a damn thing when Dammek’s shades slipped off and he saw his painful burning eyes. With everything Xefros knew about the dead, he should’ve been a lot more afraid than he was. But he was more “kind” than afraid, Xefros. He was angrier than he was afraid, too, Dammek thought, even if he didn’t realize it yet. 

Xefros even said Dammek was brave, standing up to their town like he had. He put a warm living hand on Dammek’s shoulder and said he was amazing, said it with clear soft eyes and a halting voice that meant he probably believed it. Heh. Yeah, Dammek might have gone for that, if his face wasn’t going slowly mushy like an old apple. If his teeth could be cleaned. Dammek hadn’t thought much about brushing his teeth as one of the living, but now he tasted the slick sourness of death all the time. Think he’d want Xefros to taste _that_? A solid “no,” to kisses. 

Dammek was thinking about kissing Xefros again the night before it happened. He’d persuaded Xefros to sneak out with him, sneak into a thundering concert where the air smelled like beer and drums shook the floorboards. They’d just gotten home, dizzy and laughing and bundling themselves in Xefros’s window so they didn’t wake up his dad. They were talking about something dumb, and then they were flopped down next to each other on the carpet by Xefros’s bed. There were scratchy rot stains in that carpet, now, the kind Xefros had complained quietly that he’d probably never get out. 

But also – _also_ , there was no one around just then to act like Xefros was crazy for chatting with the air, and the night outside was muggy and sweet. The kind of night with fireflies, and dead things unfolding out of the storm drains with plastic wrappers clinging to their hair like jewelry. 

Dammek said something like, “You know what we’re doing tomorrow, right?” 

And he didn’t notice the resigned half-sigh Xefros tried to smother down before he answered, “What’re we doing, Dammek?” 

It felt almost like being alive. It felt like he could reach over and pull Xefros close to him, and he wouldn’t want to squirm away. It felt sort of like he’d be able to fall asleep with Xefros’s arm folded around his waist, so it didn’t feel like he was falling, always falling out of his skin. 

Maybe things would have gone differently if Dammek had noticed how tired Xefros got, dragged around from restlessness to restlessness. Maybe if he’d noticed that Xefros had never really been the kind to sneak into concerts; maybe if he’d cared that Xefros was always scrubbing grave muck off his action figures and sports equipment, now, and growing more and more used to it by the day. Maybe. 

All Dammek was seeing was their future, their movement. The change they could bring. What he could be, even now that he was falling apart and mostly gone, now that Xefros was willing to prop him up when his legs gave out. Now that Xefros would pick up his sunglasses and rub them clean on his own shirt… now that Xefros would write lyrics with him insulting the mayor and her heiress, insulting that whole pathetic town. Now that Xefros might be willing to speak those lyrics out loud for him, in a real, living voice. 

Dammek thought about smearing a kiss on Xefros’s cheek, then, so he wouldn’t taste the rot. He thought about telling Xefros how much he adored him. _You’ve made me feel real again,_ he thought about saying. _You’ve made me feel like I can still make a difference in this fucking world._

But Dammek didn’t manage to say anything like that. He told Xefros exactly what he – the fearless leader – had planned for them in terms of revolutionary preparations the next day, and by the time morning came he couldn’t find Xefros in that room at all. 

Dammek slumped forward in Xefros’s bed, wearing Xefros’s pajama shirt. No. No, _he was wearing Xefros’s skin_. Wearing his ruffled dark hair and his clean bright teeth; wearing his solid muscles and uncracked bones. 

Dammek blinked Xefros’s eyes – they burned, still, just as they’d been burning and burning ever since he’d died. He whispered Xefros’s name, but nothing seemed to answer him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where that "possession as a metaphor" tag comes in ahahaha... I thought Dammek might have usurped Xefros's will slowly, without completely realizing it, until finally he's the one in control. It's meant to parallel a theory of mine about canon, but of course this angle could easily be proven wrong, one day! I feel like it could be kinda tragic, if Dammek doesn't know what he's done, and Xefros hasn't known how to tell him.........


	3. The Choice He Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there, and welcome to chapter 3!!! Thanks for sticking with this story all the way here. :D I hope you enjoy this chapter, if you read it. I'm sorry for anything and everything I might've gotten wrong!
> 
> Thanks!

Any one of the dead could have told you Dammek had a choice sprawling out before him, then. The kind of choice plenty of others would die again and again for, risking their names and their souls and everything that had ever mattered to them during the life they were clawing their way back to. Dammek could speak and be seen, now. Dammek could snap Xefros’s thick fingers and smear Green Day eyeliner around his eyes. He could get a cold; he could fail a test; he could grow old. He wouldn’t drift away and feel himself back under the earth, melting and sticky, worms threaded through his skin. 

Dammek tasted Xefros’s toothpaste from the night before, and when he ran a hand down his face he was very, very gentle, afraid it would come apart in his fingers. 

It didn’t. 

And that was the choice. 

For a moment, Dammek imagined what would happen if he slid out of bed, just then, and put on Xefros’s clothes (temporarily, until he could get cooler ones.) What would happen if he went downstairs and heated up some toaster waffles, maybe started designing _“Hey! Join my band!”_ fliers. He could go to school until the idea of skipping it started sounding fun, again. He could do shit like mow his dad’s lawn for once and mess with that asshole Tagora on the debate team. He could… well. He could find out how he’d died, and maybe set something grand in motion so nobody ever met a bloody end like that in their town ever again. He could be a hero, and Xefros would be a hero for giving him that shot. 

Xefros would’ve given Dammek _everything_ in that case, actually. Dammek could dedicate all his albums to him; Dammek could talk about him as his first love, all dramatic and vague, during music magazine interviews. 

_No_. 

No, deep in the core of him Dammek knew that wasn’t true. Wasn’t right, wasn’t good. Wasn’t what a guy did for somebody he loved, somebody who’d let his sorry rotting ass into their own home. Made him a part of their world. Xefros hadn’t known how to say no, not in any kind of deep, fundamental way, not in the way that would have kept ghosts out of his skin. Dammek knew a little more about what he was like, himself, now that he saw what he’d done to Xefros. 

The burning dead – the wanting dead, the desperate and the hungry. Always charring their skulls to cinders, with the blazing of their need. People who knew the dead were careful around ghosts like that. Dammek had always thought the diagnosis brought on by his burning eyes was an oversimplification… and it _was_. He hadn’t meant this. He hadn’t dragged Xefros out of his own bones and gotten cozy inside them on purpose, giggling like some cartoon villain. But it was possible to be ruinous and ruined at the same time. It was possible to do something cruel you’d never want to believe you could be capable of. 

Maybe Dammek would have taken too much from Xefros, even if he hadn’t been the sort of “dangerous” that meant he could take everything if he decided to. He hadn’t _wanted_ to hear “no,” had he? But now that he was breathing heavy and shaking, trying to get himself to stop chewing nervously on the inside of Xefros’s lip… now that he felt like he was going to be sick… Dammek knew. 

Sure, he imagined keeping that life, because what else had he wanted so, so much? Another chance. Another taste of breath, however he got it. _But he wouldn’t do this._ Xefros had been kinder than Dammek deserved. Xefros belonged on his sports teams, belonged studying in the sort of way Dammek had never given a shit about. He deserved to taste somebody’s kisses, if he wanted them, and to live as long as he could. 

Dammek jumped when Xefros’s dad came in to wake him up. (Time to get ready for school, kiddo. You’re gonna be so late! This isn’t like you.) Dammek got dressed without looking down, and strolled convincingly towards the school until he figured it was time to make a break for it. 

There weren’t a lot of resources for the dead, in libraries. There was definitely a _market_ for stuff like that, but it wasn’t like most of the living could issue some wandering, dripping thing they couldn’t see or intentionally interact with a library card. Dammek didn’t feel like he had a ton of time to read up on the occult, anyway, or practice fancy spells. To try and see Xefros, who might have been circling him right then, cussing him out, maybe, or telling him what an awful boyfriend (no, _friend_ , they had been friends) he’d turned out to be. The idea of Xefros stranded, as cold as Dammek had just been, tasting death behind his teeth… shit.

 _Shit._

Dammek couldn’t see the dead things he might have asked for advice, and even if he had they probably would’ve just wanted the strong young skin for themselves. He printed out articles, and he checked out a couple crinkly plastic bags’ worth of books from a very chatty Ms. Serket, who apparently just _loved_ ghost stories, too. 

There was definitely a way to exorcise himself. Somewhere. Only a dumbass would _try_ to exorcise themselves, probably, but Dammek liked to think he’d managed dumber things in his life. And death. You know. 

The whole time, _yes_ , he was smelling the air and feeling his toes in Xefros’s sneakers – he was smoothing book pages under his fingertips, amazed at texture as a concept. Musty books, Ms. Serket’s shivery sea air perfume, the taste of sun on Xefros’s skin. All of it, all of it, all of it, even though he knew he shouldn’t have any of it at all. Dammek held on, in those little ways. Knowing he’d want something to remember, once he gave Xefros his life back. 

After a couple days, though, it didn’t seem like he was making any progress. After Dammek realized he’d failed Xefros’s science fair presentation and gotten him a ticket to summer school, he’d been turning up for classes… trying to sit at his desk the way he thought Xefros might’ve. Trying to speak gently and think of Xefros-y things to say. Trying to half-bow his head and apologize sometimes, but only when he actually messed up and offended somebody. He absolutely sucked at it, and he’d gotten enough ghost-type books confiscated during lessons that he suspected the counselors were getting suspicious of him. 

Dammek didn’t hear about Aradia Megido until he was in one of those counselor’s offices, actually. He was dragged there by the Weird Soleil Twins after sports practice one day, sore all over and slowly realizing it took a lot more skill than he’d thought to stay on that stupid team. They’d met him in the parking lot, tossing one of his confiscated ghost books between them like a juggling club. The twins were wearing orange and purple paint around their eyes and sequins glued to their fingernails, catching the dull evening light. They always seemed to wear sunset colors. 

When Dammek saw them, he ducked his head and tried to plow straight on through without making eye contact. But Baizli said, “It’s time to go,” and Barzum added, “Our Uncle Gamzee says you need to come to his office.”

The twins wrinkled up their noses; they scuffed the dirt with their soft, silky shoes. Their uncle was that laughing, blur-eyed counselor with long tangled hair, Dammek knew. Mr. Makara, who people said had worked as a birthday clown before he’d had to find some steadier work. He’d always assured Dammek that he wanted to listen and help a brother out. Even way back when, Dammek felt, somehow. Even before he’d died, when he was still smoking in the men’s room and graffiti-ing lockers. 

The Soleil twins slunk forward, grabbing at Dammek’s arms. Xefros’s arms. They were going to pull him along somewhere; wherever they took him might end with his head splattered open again, end with his blood watering another lifeless earth. Dammek’s Death: Reprise. Maybe, maybe. But he let them drag him to Mr. Makara’s office so he didn’t get Xefros in any unnecessary trouble. 

And so Dammek listened to another rambling, heartfelt speech about reaching out to people, about trusting in the good of their universe. He heard about how Gamzee Makara had been fucked up before, too, and how he’d only just _barely_ gotten pulled back from something awful. Mr. Makara talked about all the mirrors in his house ending up broken, and almost giving in to something dark. He described bits of mirror-glass caught in his hair and stabbed through the skin of his hands, and Dammek said “Ow,” sarcastically before he remembered he was supposed to be acting like Xefros. 

Mr. Makara asked Dammek if there was anything he needed to talk about, and Dammek said no. He asked Dammek if there were any _things_ he was seeing, and Dammek said no, but a little more carefully. Mr. Makara said he had a friend who’d been all wrapped up in the dead, back in her day, and that she’d ended up with ghosts in her head. She’d always hinted that she was able to see them, but she hadn’t asked for anybody’s help until it was too late.

Dammek asked to hear just a little more about Mr. Makara’s friend, then, and the relief on that former birthday clown’s face was painfully, embarrassingly obvious. 

Aradia Megido lived in a crumbling dark house on the edge of town, the one past the train tracks, the one so crypt-dry not even ivy could stagger up its walls. Dammek went there, holding his breath as he stalked past the graveyard so Xefros didn’t end up with any _more_ parasites. He shivered through Xefros’s best coat, and winced at the fresh, flowering bruises he’d gotten trying to play that sport Xefros made look almost fun. (It _wasn’t_ fun. Not at all. Dammek had never had so many grass stains ever, and somebody had thwacked him in the back of the head with their stick-thing probably on purpose.) 

Dammek told himself that he would run, barrel roll through a dusty window or whatever, if it seemed like Aradia Megido was one of _them_. One of the heiress’s crowd. He could see what looked like bone-chimes dangling in her window, and an Indiana Jones hat hanging from an old wrought iron hat stand. And yes, he still could have turned back, even then. Maybe part of him wanted to. The part that had been jealous listening to anyone play the drums with their solid living hands, their solid living hearts pounding. 

Xefros didn’t nudge Dammek forward, into Aradia’s arms. He didn’t make him offer that life back, looking the ghost woman in her airy white eyes. Maybe he didn’t even hear the way Dammek’s voice choked when he told Aradia Megido what he’d done, or the way he stifled an ugly sob into Xefros’s sleeve when she told him they could sort that right out. He believed her, was the thing. Believed she knew what she was talking about, and that Xefros was gonna be okay. It had been so hard for Dammek to believe anybody his whole life... his whole death. Aradia’s words echoed with a dozen woven voices, chiming and far away as crystal waiting deep in unbroken rock. Far away as whatever place the dead that _didn’t_ want everything went. Heaven, maybe. An afterlife. A fresh start, beyond rot and heiresses and that whole ridiculous town. 

Dammek didn’t think he was going to that welcoming place, when he asked Aradia to exorcise him. But at least Xefros might not go there yet, either. 


	4. Your Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there!!! I hope you enjoy chapter 4, if you read it~ :D Thank you so much for reading, and for sticking with this story through to the end!!! I'm sorry, as ever, for any and all mistakes I might've made.

It was rough, gathering up all Dammek’s bones. Xefros almost considered not doing it for a righteously furious split-second, but no. No, of course he had to get Dammek buried properly, at the very least. The mayor’s people hadn’t wanted those bones to be found, though, so it took a long time to get the job done right. 

Xefros might not have been able to wrestle back the bones buried underneath a fresh coat of tarmac outside the mall by himself, actually, not without Aradia Megido’s lessons. They hunted down the bones that had been tossed – all gristly and still dripping – to some pigs, and they fished more than a couple delicate splintered ones out of that town’s muddier rivers. It was enough to make Xefros gag, honestly, all too aware of his own skin. It was enough to give him awful dreams, dreams about Dammek in pieces, gnawed on or clawing his way out of the mud. But he managed. They managed. Aradia knew the dead maybe too completely; they’d changed her long ago. 

No, Xefros couldn’t have gotten all the bones rounded up neatly without a teacher, he didn’t think. And that wasn’t a bad thing. Aradia sometimes got wistful, saying she wished there’d been someone around to teach _her_ when she needed it. Xefros hadn’t worked out how to ask what exactly had happened, yet. What roads had led Aradia to her echoey hollow voices, to the phantom expressions just beyond her face. She wore tattered skirts and the sort of joyfully wild smiles he wouldn’t have expected from a necromancy teacher, and she tried her best to come off only the _nice_ sort of haunted when she and her boyfriend swung by for dinner with Xefros’s dad. At least Aradia’s boyfriend was able to quip about the computer stuff he was working on with that casual sharpness of his, so Xefros’s dad could laugh slowly and pretend he knew what the guy was talking about. They'd gone bowling on the weekends, once or twice, by now, and Xefros had only been a little bit embarrassed when his dad bragged about his handful of runner-up sports trophies. 

Xefros had woken up to the dull haze of Aradia’s living room, back then, when he was drawn back into his bones. He had shuddered awake next to the intricately assembled skeleton of Aradia’s pet sheep and a cup of instant noodles she had made for Dammek before speaking a careful, tidy exorcism over him. First, Xefros felt a crushing hurt, a loss of self he suspected he’d been carrying around his whole life, bending more and more under its weight, and then he noticed his cheeks were wet and sticky with tears. Not his own, he knew that much right away. 

“I was gone,” Xefros gasped, staring around at Aradia’s music box collection, at the piles of number gibberish paper her boyfriend had left on the tables. And then, with more of his shock and anger behind it, _“I was gone.”_

“Dammek told me to tell you he’s sorry, and goodbye,” Aradia said, in her voice that was so many voices, “But since I’m cleaning up after his mess anyway I’m gonna tell you I think he must have been in love with you, too.” 

That was when Xefros knew that not only was Dammek gone from his skin, but he’d left the whole crumbling house. Xefros wasn’t about to see him slumped in some alley, anymore, fidgeting like he was missing his cigarettes, and he wouldn’t climb in Xefros’s window and track muddy footprints all over his homework. Dammek wouldn’t nag until they rented appropriately gritty action movies, and he wouldn’t try to help Xefros cheat by calling out other people’s test answers from across the room knowing nobody else could hear him. 

For a second, Xefros thought that might’ve been the end. He would never see Dammek to tell him he was furious or let him know he was forgiven. Whichever came first. He would never get to let Dammek know what he really felt about _anything_. 

But then, Aradia was the woman with too many ghosts. Maybe she knew the loneliness in Xefros’s face, because she said, “If you want, we can get him to his grave. Bring him peace, or bring him back. He’d come if you called him, I think.” And there it was: the second when Xefros thought maybe he shouldn’t gather up those bones. But it didn’t last. Whatever else Dammek was, he was loved back, somehow. Whatever else Dammek was, he had been sorry, and it was wrong that he’d died like he did. 

And now, _now_ it had been a long time since Xefros had learned to want himself – learned to hang on to his bones, to the callouses in his fingers, to the living ugliness that meant he was in control. Xefros had re-proven himself to his sports team, after Dammek fumbled around out there for a while, and – in a weird turn of events he didn’t completely understand – he’d assured the Soleil twins he was doing okay when they tumbled over to him, super concerned. Xefros had learned how to see what made any dead thing seethe and break inside, scribbled all honest and heartbroken over their soul, and he had learned how to speak the spells that would keep the dead human around him. 

Yes, and he had put Dammek’s bones back together. Finally. He’d met Dammek’s childhood cat and shaken his dad’s hand, too. He’d found Dammek’s picture in an old yearbook and snickered a little about the bad-boy sneer he’d been wearing. Dammek hadn’t taken very good care of his skin, back then, and he was the kind of skinny that meant he mostly ate absolute garbage. Xefros found he could look at Dammek, there, and feel less angry at him than he ever had before. This Dammek had lowered his infamous guard enough to cry in front of a stranger for him – this Dammek had turned in more assignments under Xefros’s name than he ever would have as his own self. (His handwriting was terrible, and all Xefros’s teachers had noticed.) 

The world was misty and soft when Xefros brought Dammek’s bones back to his gravestone. The whole cemetery seemed to sigh, shifting around him. Aradia said that was lucky, because the dead tended to love the sort of air that would breathe for them. She’d brought a picnic, and some friends who were waiting over on the other end of the cemetery. They weren’t watching, but they were nearby if anything went wrong. Aradia’s boyfriend was plugged in to his laptop, red and blue wires snaking their way between staring stone angels with splintery wings. Mr. Makara started to smoke something that his boyfriend in the scratchy grey sweater swatted out of his hands, hissing in what he clearly thought was a very private voice that there was a student _right over there_. What did Gamzee want to do, get fired? 

Dammek’s dad was pacing between the headstones, and if they were doing almost literally anything else Xefros might’ve made a joke about being able to see where Dammek got all his restless energy. Honestly, Xefros couldn’t think about Dammek’s dad just now. Couldn’t really think about anything except the careful arrangement of bones. The tiny, tender ones in the ear. The broken pieces he’d pasted together with Aradia, spells scrawled inside to keep them whole. 

Xefros folded up a pair of shades kind of like Dammek’s in his lap, thinking maybe he’d want them if his bones still fit. If he still wanted to come home to people who knew him at his best and his worst, people who called the name he’d already half-forgotten. He glanced up and Aradia was ready and waiting, not too close but not too far away, either. It was just like they’d planned it. Xefros nodded to himself and to the stillness, breathing in the fog. Gulping down cemetery air like he didn’t have any reason to be afraid anymore. Everything smelled like formaldehyde and wet, growing earth. Green and sour. 

Aradia reminded Xefros to peel the price sticker off those sunglasses he’d brought, and then he began. 

The spell Xefros was using didn’t always work. That was the thing about it. It was a call, not a command, and Xefros reached out into the fluid space beyond time trying not to expect anything at all. 

(Though he did expect something just a _little_ bit, of course. And later Dammek would try not to be hurt that Xefros had ever thought he wouldn’t come for him. 

Dammek would use an awkwardly aloof voice talking about it, too... the same voice he’d use later, after he kissed Xefros for the first time and couldn’t resist asking if he’d thought it tasted bad. 

It was the same voice Dammek would use much, much farther down the line, truth be told, hinting over the phone that he’d forgotten his medicine by the sink at home – that medicine to keep the rot away and hold him in his bones, medicine mixed with formaldehyde and blood – ‘cause he’d dashed out the door late for some illicit, rebellious band practice with music pounding from his headphones. You know. 

All of that was coming, soon enough.) 

But not yet. 

Now, Xefros just pulled Dammek back to him. A while away, the heiress Trizza Tethis tossed one of her scarves to a lackey, referencing some outdated meme instead of asking outright to get the bloodstains scrubbed off of it. The hungry dead of that town stared and crept in closer, squeezing their hearts to remember how it felt when they were beating. Holding their faces on, searching around for their voices like keys in the very bottom of their pockets. Dammek’s weren’t the only bones hidden under the streets, after all. The mayor’s golden family couldn’t know what was coming for them, could they? 

Xefros would ask if Dammek wanted a second chance. If they could choose to be something else, something different and new and stronger. He’d use a quiet voice, but it would be enough.

There were plenty of things Dammek could’ve said, when he woke up inside his scattered bones, buried in a pile of Xefros’s sports-themed blankets. Thank you, and I’m sorry, again, and I’d understand if you hated me. But really, Dammek crumpled against Xefros before he managed to choke any of those words out at all, shoulders limp and shaking and warmer to the touch than Xefros had ever expected him to be. He would say yes over and over, without ever really saying yes out loud at all, and Xefros would smirk and help Dammek balance those sunglasses back on his nose. 

Xefros would say, “We’re okay — or we’re gonna be okay,” and, “Your lungs will still be pretty gummy, for now, so deep breaths. Got it?”

And Dammek, for his part, was learning to listen. He would hold the sports blankets closer around himself and take deep, sticky breaths. 

No, that town couldn’t know what was coming for it at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is!!! Like I mentioned at the beginning of posting this thing: I actually wrote a first-draft of this ages ago, but got pretty stuck on what I wanted the ending to be. It could be this feels too easy... but to use the "possession as a metaphor," thing, I wanted this to be about forgiveness and healing? About choosing to try and understand each other, even if it's difficult and mistakes have been made. I considered leaving this on a question -- will Dammek choose to try again, or maybe not? -- but decided that maybe things could heal for them, this time, whatever will eventually happen with their relationship in canon. 
> 
> I hope you're staying safe and having a wonderful day. :) Thank you, again!


End file.
